Excerpt from Trouble the Living by Francesca McDonnell Capossela, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I rolled over and looked at Him, hanging on the wall on the left side of my bed. Body stretched out on the cross, ragged and desperate, limp as a lover. His eyes shiny as gemstones, His ribs concave with hunger, His stomach rounded the slightest bit as it led down to the vee where His loincloth bandaged Him. I touched my stomach, held the fatty bit between my pointer finger and thumb. Just to feel my own thickness. Then I crossed myself.

I got out of bed without waking Ma. Ina was still asleep in the bed across from mine. I went downstairs and put the kettle on the range. When it boiled, I held my mug with both hands to warm myself. The weather was always the worst when you expected the worst to be over. It was a quarter to seven, and I was waiting for Conor O'Malley to come for our bottles.

The car pulled into our driveway at five minutes to seven. It was an old Ford Cortina, pale green with scratched paint. Conor got out, walked toward the back door. As I went to meet him, I located Tad's hurley stick to the left of the doormat, just in case.

"Dia dhuit," I said.

He repeated the phrase, barely meeting my eye. Conor would've been handsome, despite the burn on his face, if he had not had eyes that shone so malevolently. His nose was thin and long, like a weapon, and his lips were as plush as sofa cushions. He'd graduated from secondary school two summers ago, but he'd been a volunteer even before then. I remembered him from school: the slump of his shoulders in the hallways, his gaze always fixed on some distant point. Something about him made you want to move out of his way.

The bottles were in a bag under the sink. All week, I had collected them for him, for this. They clinked quietly, full of possibility. Guinness, Magners, Coca-Cola. Giving Conor the bottles had been my job for the last year. The duty Ma had given me, both a mark of her regard and a cross I had to bear.

"Good girl." Conor smiled at me when I handed him the bag. I watched his hand as he took it, as it dangled near his knee. I could see that same hand, hours from now, dipping rags into petrol, placing them into those glass shells. The click and whoosh of a lighter igniting. The trash I'd given him turned to weapons.

He nodded at me. The bag clinked again. And then he was walking back to the car. The Cortina pulled out of the driveway, and the headlights passed through the trees. The sun was rising, the pink of dawn ascending beyond the gray-green fields. I went inside and turned on the TV to watch the morning news. I did not want to go back upstairs just yet. I wanted to stay in the new day's light and feel the promise of what I had done; I had given something secret to my motherland. The song of the empty bottles. A kiss for my country.

Ina's favorite fashion magazine lay on the coffee table, and I picked it up. A model was wearing a dark-red lipstick, almost purple. Vendetta, the shade was called. I studied her face, checked the skin tone of my hands against hers. I turned the page, read about blush pink and halter tops. When we were smaller, I used to kiss Ina on the lips, hoping some of her would come off on my mouth; she tasted like strawberry ChapStick.

On the TV, newsmen were discussing a bomb scare at a Liverpool horse race. Calls received Saturday at a nearby police station had warned that explosives were planted inside the stadium. More than sixty thousand spectators had had to be evacuated. There had been several other threats made recently, one of the newsmen said, in the IRA's campaign leading up to the UK general election.

Da walked downstairs as the newsman was talking. "The world's fecking mad," he said by way of greeting. I looked up at him; his hair was still mussed from sleep, and he had circles under his eyes.

I went to the kitchen and poured him a cup of tea. His hand shook as he took it from me, and I saw the flush of last night's whiskey on his face.

Excerpted from Trouble the Living by Francesca McDonnell Capossela. Copyright © 2023 by Francesca McDonnell Capossela. Excerpted by permission of Lake Union Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.